Chinese turn to online for entertainment
December 8, 2016, 8:59 am

Online entertainment, especially streaming and gaming, has gained significant popularity among hundreds of millions of Chinese in the past few years [Xinhua]

Streaming video has become the most popular entertainment tool in China, the China Netcasting Services Association (CNSA) said in its annual report released Thursday.

An increasing number of Chinese are using going online for entertainment, gaming and reading, the report adds.

The 2016 China Online Streaming Development Study Report showed a marked increase in the number of streaming service users which has now reached 514 million people. The number of people online in China is about 730 million.

The most popular streaming services are Youku, iQIYI, and Tencent, which run the gamut in forms of entertainment, online shows, reality programming, etc.

The report also showed that the number of paying streaming users rose 18.5 per cent from 2015 and registered the fastest annual growth. The CNSA says that about 182 million online streaming users are paying customers.

According to industry estimates based on 2015 data, China’s online games companies achieved 89.12 billion yuan ($13.36 billion) of revenue in Q1-Q3 that year.

This marks an increase of about 33.9 per cent from the same period in 2014.
The BRICS Post with inputs from Agencies

57 founding members, many of them prominent US allies, will sign into creation the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank on Monday, the first major global financial instrument independent from the Bretton Woods system.

Representatives of the countries will meet in Beijing on Monday to sign an agreement of the bank, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Thursday. All the five BRICS countries are also joining the new infrastructure investment bank.

The agreement on the $100 billion AIIB will then have to be ratified by the parliaments of the founding members, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said at a daily press briefing in Beijing.

The AIIB is also the first major multilateral development bank in a generation that provides an avenue for China to strengthen its presence in the world’s fastest-growing region.